DARLINGTON, S.C.—While the steering column did move quite a bit toward driver Eric McClure during his nasty crash Saturday at Talladega Superspeedway, the TriStar Motorsports team did not see anything out of the ordinary when inspecting the car after the accident, crew chief Wes Ward said Thursday.

Ward, who has spent 22 years in the sport, and NASCAR officials looked over the car Monday at the TriStar shop to determine if any of the safety features failed.

Eric McClure's car didn't fare as well as he did following Saturday's head-on wreck into one of the walls at Talladega. (AP Photo)

McClure had to be cut out of his car after the accident, where he slid several hundred feet and hit a steel-and-foam barrier head-on. He was airlifted to the hospital, where he spent two days for treatment for a concussion and mild internal bruising.

“The steering column went up quite a bit,” Ward said. “But from what they’re telling me, that’s pretty common with a frontal impact like that. … From what they’re telling me, I don’t think he actually hit the steering wheel that hard.

“It just kind of moved up. His helmet or face didn’t really go down into it that hard because of the HANS and the seat belts. There wasn’t anything in the car that we could say was bad. Everything did what it was supposed to do and everything held up.”

The car was originally built at Rusty Wallace Racing, where Ward was shop foreman. The seat was manufactured by MasterCraft.

“There wasn’t any failure in the safety of the car,” Ward said as he oversaw preparations for the team at Darlington Raceway, where Jeff Green will substitute for McClure. “It was pretty much an in-house Wallace car. … A lot of people touched the car, whether it was us or RWR. To all those people, I commend them.”

A NASCAR spokesman confirmed the visit to the shop but said the sanctioning body was still reviewing its data. Ward said he would respect NASCAR’s policy to keep the accident data private. But it obviously was a scary incident, and Ward said McClure never said anything on the radio after the accident—it wasn’t until after the race that Ward got a text from a family member telling the crew that McClure was OK.

“That was probably the hardest hit I’ve seen in a long time, if not ever,” he said. “For him to come away with very little injury, I’ve got to say it’s probably a little more than just what we had to do with it.